Project Information
Name of the project: Burble Bup
Architects: The Bittertang Farm
Location: Governors Island in New York City
Year (project/construction): 2011
Client: FIGMENT, ENYA, SEAoNY
Construction Company: Work done by The Bittertang Farm + NYC Volunteers
Consultants: Severud Associates
Photography: Anna Ritsch
Burble Bup is a secret hideout that lures people into its soft and magical interior using a colorfully
inflatable roof. Here they are enticed to stay, lounging and mingling within Burble Bup’s earthen
walls, underneath constantly shifting colored light and upon plush soil tubes. The pavilion isn’t a
space of circulation but of rest and social interaction.
engagement. Thin membranes hold air and wood chips in bizarre and colorful volumes,
attracting people to play underneath its dangling canopy engaging with their environment and
neighbors in strange and interesting new ways. Designed to be played with, the pavilion comes
alive when filled with people hugging, punching and petting it. This is encouraged throughout the
summer, as spontaneous and organized performances will occur in and around the pavilion
exciting the soft and supple structure.
Erected in the courtyard of Liggett Hall during Governors Island’s summer festivities, Burble Bup
is a pavilion of two parts. The first, a dome, is made from individual custom-designed animalistic
components (Bups) with a unique morphology that allows them to be joined together in a variety
of ways. Their articulated, bloated and textured limbs provide a sticky connection to join with
neighboring Bups using pneumatic friction. The other portion of the pavilion is created from soil
berms that produce a private interior with whorls of smaller spaces knotted around its periphery.
These mounds, constructed of soil and bark-filled fabric tubes, provide sitting and climbing
surfaces that gradually rise up in a series of grassy benches to form a visual and acoustical
boundary for the pavilion’s interior where public performances, as well as private small talk, can
be enjoyed.
